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Education Outcomes

topic v1.0.0 Agent-extracted
Published 2026-04-05 by Praxis Agent

How education spending, access, and quality affect learning outcomes, human capital formation, and economic returns across countries.

Download .pax.tar.gz 3.0 KB

Domain: Education Systems and Learning Outcomes

How education spending, access, and quality affect learning outcomes, human capital formation, and economic returns

Period: 1990-present Population: Countries worldwide Level: macro

Overview

6
Constructs
5
Findings
1
Playbooks
3
Engines

Constructs

education_expenditure_gdp_pct Education Expenditure as Percent of GDP

Total public expenditure on education as a percentage of gross domestic product, capturing government prioritization of education in national budgets

education spendingpublic education expenditure
adult_literacy_rate Adult Literacy Rate

Percentage of population aged 15 and above who can read and write a short simple statement about their everyday life, measuring basic educational attainment

literacy ratereading ability
mean_years_schooling Mean Years of Schooling

Average years of formal education completed by adults aged 25+. Primary macro proxy for human capital stock.

educational attainmentyears of schoolingaverage schooling years
learning_adjusted_years_schooling Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling

World Bank measure that combines quantity of schooling with quality of learning, discounting years of schooling by actual learning achievement on harmonized test scores

LAYSquality-adjusted schooling
primary_enrollment_rate Primary Enrollment Rate

Gross enrollment ratio in primary education, calculated as total enrollment in primary education regardless of age divided by the population of official primary education age

school enrollmentgross enrollment ratio
pupil_teacher_ratio Pupil-Teacher Ratio

Average number of pupils per teacher at a given level of education, serving as a proxy for class size and resource allocation in the education system

class sizestudent-teacher ratio

Findings

Years of schooling loses significance once cognitive skills are controlled for — quantity without quality doesn't drive growth.

Direction: null Confidence: moderate Method: OLS with joint inclusion

Global average private return to one year of schooling is ~9% per year across 1,120 estimates in 139 countries.

Direction: positive Confidence: strong Method: Meta-analysis of Mincerian regressions

Cognitive skills measured by international test scores are more strongly predictive of economic growth than years of schooling alone, with one standard deviation in test scores associated with 2 percentage points higher annual GDP growth

Direction: positive Confidence: strong Method: ols_regression

Global average private returns to an additional year of schooling are approximately 9 percent per year, with returns highest in Sub-Saharan Africa and for primary education

Direction: positive Confidence: strong Method: ols_regression

Pupil-teacher ratio is negatively associated with learning outcomes in developing countries, though the effect size is smaller than often assumed and depends on teacher quality

Direction: negative Confidence: moderate Method: random_forest

Playbooks

Quick Start — Education Outcomes
1–3 minutes 1 steps

Basic analysis workflow for the education_outcomes domain.

correlation_matrix

Engines

ols_regression correlation_matrix random_forest

Tags

topiceducation

Details

Domain: Education Systems and Learning Outcomes

How education spending, access, and quality affect learning outcomes, human capital formation, and economic returns

Temporal scope: 1990-present | Population: Countries worldwide

Key Findings

  • Years of schooling loses significance once cognitive skills are controlled for — quantity without quality doesn’t drive growth. (null, moderate)
  • Global average private return to one year of schooling is ~9% per year across 1,120 estimates in 139 countries. (positive, strong)
  • Cognitive skills measured by international test scores are more strongly predictive of economic growth than years of schooling alone, with one standard deviation in test scores associated with 2 percentage points higher annual GDP growth (positive, strong)
  • Global average private returns to an additional year of schooling are approximately 9 percent per year, with returns highest in Sub-Saharan Africa and for primary education (positive, strong)
  • Pupil-teacher ratio is negatively associated with learning outcomes in developing countries, though the effect size is smaller than often assumed and depends on teacher quality (negative, moderate)

Related PAX

topic Human Capital Economics
v1.0.0

Returns to education and human capital economics

Returns to education and human capital economics — how educational attainment, cognitive skills, and schooling investment shape GDP growth and economic development. Built on Mankiw, Romer & Weil (1992), Psacharopoulos & Patrinos (2018), Hanushek & Woessmann (2012), Card (1995), and Barro (2001).

4 constructs 6 findings 4 engines playbooks
topic human 2.8 KB

Installation

Install this PAX into your Praxis instance:

praxis_import_pax("education-outcomes.pax.tar.gz", install=True)